Everything Is Magic! III

Posted on 08 Mar 2013 @ 4:16am by Lieutenant Lilou Zaren

5,063 words; about a 25 minute read

Mission: Episode 03 - Frontier
Location: USS Galileo: Multi-purpose Laboratory
Timeline: MD04: 2300

Previously on Everything Is Magic! part two...

"You're having a debate," Lilou murmured with a finger pointing in his general direction, sipping, wincing at what had to be some kind of ancient fuel. "I'm just thinking. Think, think, think." Because she was. She couldn't help it. She felt quite often like a roll of ODN unspooling endlessly. And he was right. Part of it was that she didn't feel like he wanted to hurt her. He'd brought her back from the edge of being completely lost in her own awful, stupid, why won't they just go away? memories; it would have been pointless, illogical, for him to wait a day and then beat her senseless. And Lieutenant Panne... she was almost positive she hadn't done anything to make the woman want to hurt her. Almost. But people were surprising. Distressed, though... no. She wasn't. Not really. Just... surprised at herself. And the fact that she was sitting here drinking this... drink... with people. She never drank with people. She made an effort not to talk to people longer than she had to. Didn't she? So why was she even here? Because their minds are like ice and fire, she thought, looking between them. And I want to learn to be like that. Centered and brilliant. Watch and learn. She frowned a little, belatedly. Lieutenant Panne was still distressed. Slamming things. Slamming was not something people did when they were pleased. Or frowning. Well. She did, but that was beside the point. She wasn't People; she was just her. Or something. She exhaled, flattened a hand on the table, and swallowed the rest of the contents of the beaker. "Yaaa," she pressed a hand to the side of her head, blinked, sighed and sat back calmly.

"No death," Liyar murmured under his breath. He looked up at Maenad. "I am not ignoring you," he told her pointedly, blinking innocently up at her. He wasn't. Really. "I assumed that you were being what you would term sarcastic. Which is indicative of displeasure. Did you know that the term sarcasm comes from the Greek etymology sarkasmos," he butchered unpleasantly in a very horrible accent, "Which indicates to tear flesh, bite the lips in rage, sneer? Highly illogical," he said as though he himself were never remotely sarcastic, ever. Although, he mused to himself, it somehow reminded him of Vulcans anyway. Maybe they are all sarcastic. Maybe that is why so many people dislike them. "Hm," he finished brilliantly.

And now, the conclusion...

[ON]

Maenad was reminded of how unfair it was that he could hear some of her thoughts while she hear none of his. She frowned as she leaned against her table. She picked at the chips while Peers and Liyar talked, and she became suddenly aware that she was the most in control of her faculties than either of them. Liyar drunk. A slight grin appeared on her lips.

"I did know that," Maenad said to him. How Liyar knew that, she had no idea. And why he was talking about death, she also had no idea. Death was not something that she liked to think about. "No death?" she asked, reaching for another chip.

"No death," Liyar confirmed, looking sideways at Lilou.

The Trill sat with her eyes closed, running her tongue around the backs of her teeth because for the life of her she couldn't feel the tip of her tongue at all. And the tingling sensation in her forehead had spread across her cheeks. "Not today," she answered.

"What?" Maenad breathed, overpronouncing the tee. She felt a swirl in her vision; the liquor was quite strong, she finally realised. Stronger than she'd thought. She ate another chip.

"What?" Liyar repeated helpfully.

A tremor of a laugh slipped out of Lilou. "What," she repeated, then dissolved into helpless silent chuckling for about twenty seconds.

Maenad held her hand over her eyes, trying to suppress a grin of her own. She was laughing, but she found nothing funny. "Just forget it," she mumbled, feeling the world move from behind her eyelids. "What did I drink?" she asked instead.

"Sheekuya na," Liyar announced promptly, raising the bottle with Vulcan characters on the side. They were Miri'ahm gotavlu but the calligraphy was familial, obviously personal. He did not realize it at the time but the veritable wobblyness of his brain allowed him to act like an amplifier for the pleasant, drunken feelings surrounding them. "Vulcans do not do things by half-measures," he nodded down into his shot and drained it, still stone-faced, but somehow that did not seem to matter.

"I think it's some kind of Vulcan toxin. We're all going to dissolve... into... something." Lilou wrinkled her nose and couldn't feel it happening. "But no! No death. Not today. So. We will dissolve into something... not death-like." Nudging her beaker towards the bottle, she hummed, perfectly pleased with her contribution to the conversation.

Maenad raised her eyebrows but said nothing. She lifted herself out of her lean into a sit, her legs hanging over the side of the table. She ate a few more chips. "Does anyone want any of these?" she asked after swallowing.

Liyar plucked one up and stared at it. "What is this?" he stood to his feet steadily, more steady than he felt in his head anyway. He stepped Very Precisely, more precisely than necessary, over to the replicator and tapped up the menu. "What is pizza?" he asked back at his friends. They were all friends, now. Friends could eat pizza. Whatever that was. Liyar remembered his chip and popped it into his mouth, looking as confused as someone could look while they ate.

"It's bread," Lilou asserted, as quietly as an assertion could be made. "With cheese. And tomato sauce. And other things." She looked at him hovering near the replicator, "No. Meat." She eyed the chips, looked at Maenad, looked back at them. "Are you sure you don't mind?"

"Yes, I'm sure," Maenad gave her the bowl of chips and wiped her hands on her skirt. "Mister Liyar, if we are going to have pizza, I think we should probably go back to my quarters, or somewhere else," she called to him. "We're breaking a lot of protocols in here, and I don't want to get us all in trouble."

Lilou's eyebrows winged up. Oh. Spirits. Stone. Her gaze jerked up to the ceiling where she searched for cameras. "Yes. Yes. Time to go. I will take this." She grabbed the bottle. "For protocol's sake."

Liyar turned around, staring at them both. Where were they going? Why was she taking his alcohol? He Frowned at them both imperceptibly (or so he thinks) and grabbed his box of pizza out of the replicator, hugging it to his chest protectively as he stomped over to his desk and grabbed the fereikek reh and added components. "Then we shall go. Off and away." He looked at them both owlishly. "To Maenad's quarters." He pointed at the door jauntily.

Maenad stood, taking the bowl of chips with her and led the way into the corridor. The three of them walking down the hall looked as mismatched as anything; Maenad with snacks, Peers with a bottle of liquor, and the Vulcan Liyar carrying an extra-large pizza. A science crewman passing by gave Maenad a funny look, but she hardly acknowledged him. The only response he got was flush in her cheeks. She ordered the turbolift to deck two and again led the way to her quarters, which was just as disastrous as it always was. She had a few dishes on her kitchen counter, a half-drunk bottle of wine on her coffee table also covered in PADDs and a hardbound novel. Yesterday's clothes were the floor by the couch, and a colourful quilt draped half on the cushions and half on the floor. As always, Maeand wasn't expecting company.

She hurried over to the living area and moved things around to make it look tidy. She bunched up most of the clothes and dropped them on one of the chairs, leaving one living room chair and the sofa beneath the windows for them to sit on. The blanket she threw over the back of the sofa, but made no effort to fold it. "We can sit over here," she said, switching on the lamp as she told the computer to turn off the rest of the lights.

Liyar walked in and laid his pizza down on the table in front of him and unconsciously began folding up the blanket, and then he moved to collect the PADDs and clothes and wine at random. He stacked the PADDs and placed them back on the table, and then left as though it were totally normal and placed the wine back in the shelf before he started on the pile of clothes, folding them and then placing them off to the side. Completely oblivious, he sat back on the couch when he was done and stared at the pizza with an odd, confused sort of look. "The replicator told me that you are supposed to drink alcohol with pizza. It said beer and pizza," he insisted. He looked up to realize they were both looking at him funny and shrugged.

Lilou hovered in the doorway as the two of them cleaned Maenad's quarters like a well-oiled machine. Why it needed to be tidied, she wasn't quite clear on, but... the CSO had a lot of stuff. While Liyar took it upon himself to order the space, Lilou stopped by the counter and lifted one of the books. Books. She brought it to her nose and breathed in the scent. It didn't matter what it was, really. Only... Will's books had smelled so old and dusty and this one was just paper. Still paper was a good smell. Something new. Lilou opened the hardbound novel and was reading intently for almost a minute before Liyar's voice pulled her out of it again. "All right," she agreed. She'd been invited. The least she could do was go along with more alcohol and food. "But there's still... sheekuya..."

"I don't drink beer," Maenad said as she sat down on the couch, next to the lamp. She shook her head at Liyar's tidying, but ignored it. For some reason he always did that. As soon as she'd settled and Peers reminded them of the sheekuya, she realised that they needed glasses. Sighing, she got up again and headed to the kitchen for three wineglasses. When she returned she passed one to each of her friends and settled back on the sofa. Seeing the pizza, she remembered that she'd also forgotten the plates. They didn't need plates; it was pizza. "What kind of pizza is it?" she asked.

Liyar opened the box. "It is red," he said rather uselessly. There were big red circles on it. And yellow-thing underneath. And red-thing under that. It was very... yellow and red.

The room was tilted. Lilou frowned slightly, studying the angles of the floor to the wall, the wall to the ceiling. They appeared to be right angles, but that was clearly wrong, because she drifted slightly to the right as she walked towards them and had to keep correcting. That could have been a sign of inebriation, true, but she felt all right. Not dizzy. Just a little numb in the face and tongue, but that happened with pineapples too, so it wasn't really that big of a deal. Pouring another round of the slightly blue liquor into the wineglasses, she set the bottle down and then set herself down on the floor by the table. "Tomatoes." She wrinkled her nose again and rested her fingers on her face. No, it was still moving. So. Not frozen. Wouldn't that be nice, if drinking something could freeze her face like theirs? Absently, she plucked the wineglass up and paused half way to drinking it. Not a shot glass. Nope. Oh well. She tossed it back and this time she didn't even cough, which was really proof that she was handling it all quite well. The conflict and the company and the drink and everything. Yes. Yes, indeed.

"Thank you, Miss Peers," Maenad said with a thankful raise of her glass. She then took a long drink, swallowed, and reached for a slice of pizza. It was vegetarian, but she would still enjoy it - she was starving. "You don't like tomatoes?" she asked Peers.

"I love them," Lilou tugged her braid over her shoulder, then nabbed a slice. "You have a lot of things."

Liyar carefully and precisely selected one of the slices and studied it like some kind of computer terminal system. Then he looked down at his new glass and when did that get refilled? But there it was. He grabbed it and drank. "These are pretty." He decided that with a nod down at the glass. There was an odd little pattern on it. "Is that the word? Standard," he humphed. He didn't trust it, though. Athlen had told him that was an acceptable word to use. Athlen could not be trusted.

"Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror," Lilou mused, with a bite of the pizza - which was very good! - tucked into her cheek.

Not wanting to be impolite, even though she could definitely feel the growing warmth in her veins, Maenad couldn't answer Peers right away. Liyar was talking about the pizza being pretty and she ignored him with a mocking smile. "I have heard that before," she said to Peers. "I like to collect things," she told her. "And I like plants and animals." Maenad looked over her shoulder at all the plants and flowers along her windowsills, and the individual hand-painted ceramic and wooden animals she'd hidden among them. She back around and smiled her teeth, not really knowing why. She finished the rest of her drink and went for another slice.

"Not pizza," Liyar interrupted under his breath.

Lilou followed Panne's gaze to the plants and figurines. "And books," she added. So many things. She'd filled her quarters with them. Made it look like... well. Like it was hers. Who had the time? "Bits of Earth," she surmised.

"Exactly," Maenad enthused. "I love Earth." She took another bite of pizza, this time from the side of the crust. "I love forests," she said to Peers. "Getting lost in them. Walking by rivers. Just breathing." What did that have to do with anything? "I can't be in the arboretum all the time, and it's more alien than Earth: it has species of tree, plants, flowers, from all over the place. But in here, I feel more at home than anywhere else on the ship."

Forests. Lilou thought all the way back to Foxcroft. She'd never really walked through them, or by rivers; she'd certainly never gotten lost in them, but she'd seen them through the rounded windows of the insulated academy. There'd been a certain... pleasantness to the coloration and the way the leaves moved in the wind. They way they gathered the show. She chewed her pizza, eyeing the collection. Plants in space. Home. Home. It was a strange concept. She'd loved where she'd grown up, but she'd never call it that. The word 'home' had a sense of ownership, like all things Lieutenant Panne had collected, but the research station hadn't been hers. It hadn't belonged to anyone individually. The room she'd slept in as a child, inside the quarters her parents had been granted, none of it actually belonged to them. Just like her various dorm rooms and subsequent ship-board quarters hadn't belonged to her. Yet, Maenad spoke of Earth as though the whole planet were hers and hers alone. Strange.

Maybe not strange, Lilou considered. After all, the Galileo was hers, in a way, wasn't it? The shuttles. The emergency crafts. They were hers. Her responsibility. Her passion. Transitory, maybe, but she felt protective of them. Her gaze dropped to the floor and she patted it gently, like it was her pet. She was a good ship, the Galileo was. She made the people inside feel like they were home. She kept them moving, despite everything. "I love this ship."

Liyar listened to them talk, without truly having anything significant to contribute to the conversation. He did not know anything about Earth, nor about research stations beyond their purpose. He allowed the random images to flow through his head and indulged them curiously without really knowing what they were referencing. Forests. Trees. Flowers. None too natural to Vulcan, at least not where he had grown up. There had been the wet-planet observatory, a facsimile of an 'arboretum'. Then they were speaking of home in general. Liyar could feel the deep chorded low-hum of home in his head, like rooting his feet on the ground. He stared very intently at his pizza as he thought about all this.

Maenad didn't know that she loved the ship or anyone on it, but so far she supposed that she couldn't complain. The only person she actually disliked was Stone, and then probably Kiwosk and his macho-headedness. She would have said he was harmless, but that wasn't as true as she had once believed - up until Kiri had told about his slander. He'd apologised after a good slap to the face, but time would tell whether it were sincere.

"Yes, we are lucky to have found each other," Maenad said to Peers. It was as close to expressing love for the ship as she could get. Like with Kiwosk's apology, it would take time before she could express an emotional attachment to Galileo.

"I like your arboretum," Liyar mumbled as they talked. "Mr. Petrov should not turn it into a K-class environment. Then there will be too much death on the walls." He shook his head disapprovingly. He liked the arboretum. Wait, he just said that. Well, he did. It was nice to meditate in. Maenad's quarters were nice, too. "Everything is nice when it is alive," he said Very Factually and took another bite of his pizza.

"Not everything," Lilou mumbled into her glass, then swigged the rest of it. "Hey. Oh. Is this your first pizza?" she asked, swiveling towards Liyar.

"Affirmative," he said. That was a very, very long word. "Yes," he corrected. Much better.

"What do you think?"

Liyar took another bite. "I like pizza," he announced shortly after swallowing.

"Good!" Maenad nodded, finishing her second piece. She sat back in her seat a little more and turned to smile at Liyar, who seemed happy. That was a plus. "Though, this would have been better with at least some pepperoni," she admitted.

"Do you know what's in pepperoni?" Lilou inquired, disturbed.

"Negative," Liyar interjected obliviously.

"Neither does anyone else," the engineer made a little 'hmph' sound. "Just... mishk- miske- miscellaneous meat."

"Meat," Liyar agreed, shaking his head. He looked down at the half-empty bottle of sheekuya na. "I have a highly logical idea," he said a little more enthusiastically than a Vulcan should have said anything. This might have been the clue bat that it wasn't so logical after all, but he wasn't at his brightest. He paused for a beat and then blurted out, "Zhagra-navileh. I will ask a question. No, no. We all ask questions. If you do not answer, you drink the kahs'khior'i." He indicated the glass. Well, "The glass," he amended.

"What?" Maenad asked, frowning. What the hell was he talking about? She dismissed the comment about pepperoni; it was replicated, so she didn't care. "Liyar?" she shook her head tiredly, like she wasn't in the mood for whatever he was thinking.

Lilou sat up a little straighter, "Are you- Oh, Vulcan drinking games are fun."

"Yes, yes," Liyar conceded with a nod and a gesture. "You see, I will go first. Arrange the digits of one through nine into one nine-digit number which reflects that for each number from one to nine, the first N digits of the number are divisible by N." Liyar leaned forward, eyes bright and slightly glassy. His tone had picked up considerably, and his accent was beginning to become more pronounced and less precise.

Lilou puffed out her cheeks, her lids twitching as she watched the numbers rotate and resolve themselves in her head. "Wait, wait... Right. Three. Eight. Right. Three eight one. Three eight one six five." Her head twitched slightly. Three eight one six five four seven two nine!" She pointed at him. "Bottoms up."

Liyar pointed back. "Ah." Starting off easy might not have been the best possible thing there. He tipped the glass over and drained it, blinking twice before pouring another one.

This was insanity. If someone had told her that morning that she'd be eating pizza, drinking, and watching a Trill and Vulcan play a drinking game in her living room, well, she wouldn't have believed it. She hardly believed it then. She took a third slice from the box, watching them a playful grin.

"Right." Lilou hummed, staring intently at the table for a few long moments. "Oh!! Oh. How many digits is the longest prime number!"

"That is 243,112," he paused and then added, "609 -- 1 with..." he tapped his finger against the glass. "12,978,189 digits," Liyar finished primly, tilting his head at Lilou's own glass.

Lilou's hum turning into a laugh trapped inside her mouth and she held out her hand for the bottle. "I'm out," she wiggled her fingers, then poured herself a measure and tossed it back with a squinty face. "Lieutenant Panne!" she peeked over the edge of her pizza. "Your turn."

Maenad wasn't sure she knew how to play this game. "Okay, Liyar," she grinned. "What kind of cheese is that on the pizza, and what is the sauce made of?" She reached for another slice and took a bite.

Liyar drew himself up straighter in anticipation of answering her question and then deflated a little as his mind went blank. "What?" he asked obtusely, looking down at his pizza. "Tomatoes," he remembered Lilou said that. "And..." he frowned a little. His shoulders slumped a tiny bit and he took the shot grudgingly. "And that," he finally said, pointing at it. "Whatever it may be." He looked up at Maenad and set his glass down. "What is the probability that if one person looks at another person for a full total of any three hours per 24 hour rotation and that individual looks back for two hours, that they will both look at one another at the same time?"

"Like a hundred percent," Lilou murmured, looking at him quizzically.

"That is an imprecise and therefore inaccurate answer." Liyar blinked down at her wineglass.

"Ah. No!" She made a fist and wiggled it next to her head. "Sixty-six point six six seven - aaagh." She attempted to scowl at him, but the expression was lopsided. "Three and two, you sneak." She drank another measure.

"48 30-minute rotations, 96 quarters of 60, 288X5, 1440 minutes, and 86400 leaving one individual to pick 8 quarter-hours, leaving 88. The other is 12, leaving a total chance of miss at 88 C 12 / 96 C 12 equals 205371886988268 / 624668654531480 equals point 329," Liyar babbled. "Which results in a one-third chance of a miss, and a two-thirds chance of a hit, the problem is therefore solved as a probability of 2 or 3 hours at 17%, 1 at 24, rounding 30, 20, 15, 10, 5, 2 at 42.5, 56.6, 67.1, 81.2, 96.5 or 99.98%," he finished with a flourish. Liyar shrugged thoughtfully.

"Wait. No. Two and three... But the question was whether they would look at each other at the same time. SO... yes! One hundred percent! Indivisual-" The engineer flexed her lips. "Person A looks at Person B for three hours. Person B looks back for two. Therefore, Person B is looking at Person A for two of the three hours, making it a hundred percent probability that they will both look at each other at the same time."

Liyar gave her a boggled expression. What? "Person B is not looking at Person A for two solid hours," he pointed out, Very Reasonably. He perused his memory for what he had said. Words. He blinked his eyes in what might have possibly been a ghost of an eyeroll and poured himself another round. "Standard," he grumped as he downed it.

"HA!" Lilou crowed, just before her eyes shocked wide at her own outburst. "Er..." She dropped her gaze to her pizza. "Okay... Take nine from six, ten from nine, fifty from forty and wind up with six," she offered quietly. "Why?"

"SIX - 9(IX) = S, 9 (IX) - 10 (X)...." He glanced at the wall. It was turning fuzzy now. His braintube filled in the rest happily. "= I, 40 (XL) - 50 (L) = X...." he peaked over at her, eyebrows furrowed. "... What?" He wondered if it was normal to swim in his brain this way. Maybe it was. "What was the question?" He stared at the bottle forlornly. For a Vulcan. "Six?" Oh. "I see."

Lilou dutifully drank.

Maenad laughed, watching them. At least Peers had taken her question and spared her the shame of losing at math. She thought about pouring another drink, but decided that three was enough for her. It was strong stuff and the night was still very young. She felt content just watching everything. The bowl of chips she'd brought from the lab was still on the table, so she reached for a handful and started eating them one by one, nibbling each ridge one at a time.

The Trill looked expectantly at the CSO. It was her turn to ask a question and it had been fun to watch the too smart Vulcan be stumped by pizza.

"Oh," Maenad realised when Peers looked at her that she was holding them up. "Uh," she didn't know what to ask. Looking around the room for inspiration, she looked at the piano. "How many total keys on a full-range piano?" she asked. "No looking."

Lilou blinked hard. On a piano? Why would- She tried to picture the instrument in her head, but she'd never really studied one. Maybe that explained why she'd been so terrible at it the few lessons her father had insisted on. Thirty? No, that wouldn't be enough, right? Pianos were long and the keys were narrow. She squinted, "Sixty?"

Maenad smacked her lips. "Eighty-eight," she smiled.

The Trill squinted towards the piano. Then carefully pulled herself to her feet and counted the keys one by one, her finger tapping each one as she went along.

Liyar decided the floor was very nice indeed. Or was it the couch? Where was he? Everything was swimming. He put his head on the table and breathed in deeply. Nice table. He realized, just before the creeping edges floating about his consciousness overtook him, that perhaps he had overestimated how much he was able to drink in one sitting as a higher level telepath. Oopsie. Nice blackness.

The steady notes playing in ascending order were mesmerizing. Lilou lost track of counting, her nose drawing closer and closer to the keys. The only sign that she'd passed out was the odd additional notes in the D minor chord as her head came to rest on the keyboard.

Maenad was sitting there with her slice of pizza, listening to Peers strike each and every key one at a time, watching Liyar move himself from the couch to the floor. "Liyar," she said, almost laughing, "What are you doing?" But he didn't answer. For some reason, he started lowering his head until it was on the table. Curiously, Maenad watched him, expecting him to start talking about how he was using some kind of ability he thought he had to communicate with glass. She waited for a good ten seconds before she frowned. "Liyar?"

The music had stopped too. She perched up to look over when she heard a combination of notes in D minor. Peers was passed out on the keys. "Lilou?" she called quietly. There was no reply from her, either. Maenad looked down at Liyar, expecting drool to come out of his mouth, but nothing came. He laid there, dead-looking. She finished her pizza and exhaled, then got up and walked over to where little Lilou Peers laid on the keys. She carefully pulled her off, nesting her head into her shoulder as she spun the much smaller woman's legs around to her side of the bench she was slumped on. Satisfied with the way Lilou's head was, Maenad put her arm beneath Lilou's knees, and slowly stood to carry her over to the couch, where she ever so softly set her down. The quilt that Liyar had earlier folded and put over top the back cushions Maenad now draped over Miss Peers and tucked her in. Then, she gently snuck a pillow under Lilou's head and smiled down at the little Trill.

There was no hope that she could lift Liyar, however, and she grinned to herself at the thought of trying. Instead, she got another pillow off one of the chairs and set it down on the floor for his head. "Oh, Liyar," she laughed affectionately. She helped move him off the table into a comfortable laying position, carefully maneuvering him so as not to spill anything on the table. She came back from her bedroom closet with a woven quilt and put it over him. Before retreating to her bedroom, Maenad looked at the two of them fast asleep. A warm smile spread on her lips as she turned out the lights.

[OFF]

Lieutenant (JG) Maenad Panne
Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo

Lieutenant (JG) Liyar
Diplomatic Officer, VDF/SDD
USS Galileo

ENS Lilou Peers
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Galileo

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